


Aspirations of Conquest

by 23Murasaki



Series: Everyone Lives! [20]
Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Agni is a nice person, Gen, butlering is also difficult
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-20
Updated: 2014-02-20
Packaged: 2018-01-12 23:03:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1203760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/23Murasaki/pseuds/23Murasaki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Soma and Agni get snowed in at Phantomhive manor. Soma may want to take over the world, and Agni may be trying to save a soul or two. That, or it's cabin fever.<br/>... There are also kittens, once again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aspirations of Conquest

“I am going to do it!” announced Prince Soma out of the blue. The demon was vaguely concerned, given that Prince Soma had spent the fifteen minutes prior to this declaration of intent staring very intently at the curtains and the last thing he had deigned to do that vehemently had been a Christmas party.  
  
“My prince?” Agni asked uncertainly, looking up from doing something or other with candles. Prince Soma grinned hugely and marched up to the windows, with evident intent to throw them open. The demon caught on after a second and hastily placed himself between him and his target.  
  
“Prince Soma. That is not an exit. It does not matter how snowed in we may be.” The prince pouted. They were, it was true, remarkably snowed in. It had snowed for three days straight and the young master had been battling a cold, there was more than enough food, and there were kittens to tend to, which was the demon’s excuse for not having managed to uncover the door, the kitchen door, or any of the ground floor windows.  
  
“Well, I declare it to be an exit!” announced Prince Soma with a grandiose sweep oh his arms. “Right, Ciel?” To the demon’s relief, his young master did not agree, and instead scowled into his tea.  
  
“Stop talking nonsense, Soma,” he grumbled. “In England, we use doors.” Soma threw himself theatrically into an armchair and sighed.  
  
“But Cieeeel,” he whined. “I want to build snowmen!”  
  
“Why?” asked the young master, in the tone of voice he usually used for ‘why would you set that on fire Sebastian go fix it’ and the like.  
“Because we need an army!” declared Prince Soma with a gesture that would have upended the tea set had the demon not snatched it out of the way in the nick of time.  
  
“Oh,” said the young master, evidently considering this. “Well, I don’t need an army. I have Sebastian.” He could feel the abrupt increase in his butler-y duties. He could just feel it.  
  
“But what if you wanted to take over a country?” asked the prince, shifting around so that he was sideways in the armchair. The young master stared at him.  
  
“... Have you ever really considered taking over a country?” he asked. Prince Soma shrugged.  
  
“Well, sometimes. Doesn’t everyone?”  
  
“Not everyone has the heart of a king, my prince,” pointed out Agni gently. “And fewer people still have the patience to run a happy and prosperous nation.”  
  
“Agni, you are ruining my daydreams!” groaned the prince, and the young master hid a smirk. Agni instantly looked apologetic and bowed very low.  
  
“My apologies, my prince! I did not think of it!” He looked about to cry again, and the demon wondered if there was something in the world he would not tear up about. Probably something actually distressing. Murder. High treason. Something like that.  
“Some daydreams ought be ruined, though,” said the demon quietly. “It does not do to discuss taking over a country in the presence of a servant of the Queen of England.” Now both Agni and the prince looked like they were going to start crying, most likely on one another.  
“Oh, enough,” huffed the young master. “Sebastian, do bring something sweet for us.” Sebastian fix it, yet again. The demon tried not to roll his eyes.  
  
“Yes, my Lord,” he said. “Is there anything in particular you would like?” His young master shrugged, but the prince swung himself into an upright position.  
  
“Hot cho~colate~!” he half-yelled. The demon gave a short bow.  
  
“Very well. Hot chocolate for the aspiring conquerers,” he muttered.  
  
\----  
  
Of course Agni tailed him down to the kitchen, with some rant about atoning for his sins and another rant about things that went well with chocolate, and of course by the time the chocolate was done neither the young master nor the prince were where the demon had left them, and of course he delivered the chocolate and a warning about the fragile nature of prepubescent boys and fancy couch pillows, turned around, and was met by Agni with two more cups of chocolate. And, of course, he couldn’t talk his way out of getting sidetracked, again.  
  
“They’re getting so much bigger!” said Agni, managing to sound amazed by the fact that kittens grew. The demon nodded and took a sip of his drink. It was bitter and thick and not as odd-tasting as he would have expected.  
  
“They are still babies, though,” he noted. “It will be a long time until they are grown.” To demonstrate, one of the kittens managed to trip over its sibling’s tail and topple over head first. “Don’t do that, you’re still fragile,” the demon chided.  
  
“A longer time for them than for us,” said Agni, a distant look in his eyes. “Still, yes, it will be until... Spring, perhaps, or Summer.”  
  
“A lot can happen in six months,” said the demon. He knew that well. A whole contract could happen in six months or, often, fewer. “Time is relative.”  
  
“Yes,” said Agni. “A lot can happen.” They had known each other over a year now, the demon thought. It had been an incredibly strange year. He wondered if a lot of things had happened, and thought about hell hounds and cats and reapers and demons and decided that yes, a lot of things had.  
  
“Are you trying to tell me a story again?” he asked, glancing curiously at Agni.  
  
“No,” replied Agni with a smile. When he smiled like that, he looked like he knew something important. “I am thinking, these little ones were not alive six months ago, and six months from now they will be grown cats. That is all.”  
  
“You are trying to tell me story,” the demon accused, half-playfully. “What are you really talking about, this time?” Agni always tried to tell him stories about gods and heroes and princes and cats that were thinly veiled allegories for one another and also daily life. He could understand about half of them, but sometimes everyone was Kali or Shiva or someone like that and he got a little lost. Agni laughed quietly and assisted one of the kittens in climbing onto his lap.  
  
“No, no, it really was just kittens,” he assured the demon. “Though, I think I can make it a story if you would like.” There was an audible crash upstairs as, presumably, Prince Soma took down some furniture in vain attempts to triumph over his host in a pillow fight. The demon exhaled slowly and took another sip of bitter chocolate.  
  
“Yes, please tell me a nice story about cats and metaphors wherein I do not have to piece chairs back together,” he said wearily. There was a kitten on his foot, playing with his shoelaces.  
  
“Ah, alright,” said Agni. “Well, once upon a time, there was brave soldier...” The story wound up involving tigers and gods and a deal with a being that sounded like a contract demon but wasn’t, and everyone wound up living happily ever after. The demon though the kittens grasped more of the moral than he did. Still, it sounded very nice.


End file.
